① We all regarded the situation as serious.

② She described him as really clever.

③ At present, in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right.

④ We seem to have come into a world which was ready-made for us, which works perfectly in every detail and requires no effort on our part. We are likely to take the extraordinary mechanical marvels which ease our existence for granted.

⑤ They make fun of these expressions as being unnecessarily complex and hard to say.